This story angers me yet terrifies me. What if a loved one of mine needed a life saving surgery, but the insurance company refused to authorize payment?
It’s a terrible shame that with all of the technology, knowledge, and talented doctors we have in this country, that anyone should die from a condition that could be treated with surgery or medication or any other type of medical treatment.
If someone has cancer for instance, and there just isn’t a cure and the person dies, that’s another issue. We simply don’t have a cure for cancer. But for anything else that can be treated or is fatal if left untreated, it should be treated and money just shouldn’t be an option, because after all a human life is priceless.
Now this story is getting a lot of publicity, but I know very well that for this story, there are thousands of others like it that don’t get any attention. Patient has allegedly “good” health insurance. Patient needs life saving operation or medications. Insurance denies payment because they don’t want to spend the money. (Of course they don’t put that in the denial letters) Patient later dies. No national media attention. Patient’s family mourns.
This story is getting national attention however and the best thing that could happen is that some major changes are made to American health care policies. But don’t count on it because the American health care system has been in crisis for a while, everyone knows it, and still, not much has been done.
Nataline Sarkisyan is, I mean was, a 17 year old girl from California who needed a life saving liver transplant. A donor had been found. CIGNA, the greedy health insurance company (it’s for profit after all, they are just doing their job by denying treatments and saving the almighty dollar) at first approved payment for the surgery. But then somebody must have decided this would just cost too much so they later denied payment. They said it was because it was “too experimental”. Yeah, ok. They can’t be honest and just say the real reason why they deny payments for surgeries.
Nataline’s doctors even wrote a letter to Cigna asking them to reconsider their decision. Nataline was induced into a coma while her parents declared war on Cigna.
A bunch of teenagers and nurses staged a protest outside of Cigna’s offices. They demanded them to pay for Nataline’s liver transplant.
Cigna must have realized all the bad publicity they were getting and wanted all the angry protesters to go away, so they finally changed their minds again and decided they would pay for her liver transplant after all.
But unfortunately, it was too late. Nataline was gone.
The liver for transplant was available. The skilled surgeons were available. All of the high tech medical equipment doctors use was available. But thanks to Cigna, the money was not available. And that is why a young girl who could have lived a full life is dead.